GIRLS BASKETBALL: North Port has a unique way of doing things

Just as odd as his hiring, Tom Tintor’s coaching style will not be found in any manual.

The North Port High girls basketball coach has a two-platoon system featuring his 10 best players. He does not partake in offseason conditioning. His practices are fun. His team has not run a lap and he did not schedule to play in a Christmas tournament.

“It is unconventional,” he says. “The boys coaches just come in and shake their head.”

Yet, Tintor’s Bobcats are the only area girls basketball team still in the postseason playoffs.

North Port will play in the Class 8A-Region 2 final Saturday at 7 p.m.against District 5 runner-up Orlando University at the Bobcats Cage, the third straight regional home contest.

“You have to coach by personality sometimes,” said Tintor, whose club finished second in Class 8A in grade-point average one year ago and should be at or near the top again this year. “You have to see what the kids like. There are some kids I have to give a little freedom. If I put pressure or put the squeeze on them, they just totally go into a shell or reject it. But they’ve been pretty good.”

Pretty good does not describe the Bobcats. They already have set a school record for wins. Their two region victories – 68-30 over Lithia Newsome and 71-34 over Tarpon Springs East Lake – are the first two in the history of the program.

And they do it with contributions from everybody.

“We’ve got 10 kids who can play, so they might as well as play,” Tintor said.

He wanted a strong point guard on each and divided his two post players.

At a practice earlier this week, the second team beat the first team, 19-2.

“A couple of kids on the second group might be better than the kids starting, but I would like to have some spark when they come in there,” Tintor said. “The first team is a little quicker.”

The first team plays man-to-man defense. The second team plays a couple of different zones, but can also play man.

“It just seems to work,” Tintor said. “They’ve really jelled. I never hear a peep from a parent or kid about playing time. Or why am I not on the first team. None of that. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. That’s rare. They’ve all accepted their place. They know that works, and it works real well. Everybody gets to play. Nobody sits the bench. Nobody’s coming in for the last two minutes of the game. Everybody is playing around 16 minutes.”

Tintor tried the same strategy a few years ago with different reaction.

“We won our first 11 games,” he said. “Then, the girls started squawking about playing time, so we stopped. And then we were three or four games under .500.”

Led by Washington’s 9 points and 8 rebounds, nine players are averaging 4 or more points. There are nine players with 24 or more steals.

“Statistically, we don’t have any kids lighting the world up, but they are only playing half the game or a little more than half the game,” said Tintor, assisted this year by Dale Huffman and Bruce Reichenbach.

And they are fresher. Without much conditioning, getting a Christmas break, Tintor notices more spring in his players’ legs, which is conducive to his all-out style of play.

“It seems to be working,” he said. “I just can’t slow the kids down. We can’t have that kind of offense. We can’t walk the ball up the court and run picks. We just are playing with what we have.

“We want to have 32 minutes of mayhem. We want to be nasty, nasty defense and just try to disrupt everything the other team does. We’re not going to look pretty doing it. We just want the pace to be ours.”

Practices are similar. Tintor never stresses winning, just playing hard.

“Just like the game,” he said. “Our practices are the same thing every day. It’s a routine. They can run that practice themselves and basically they do. We play music for 20 minutes, do fast break stuff, our full court stuff. We get all our conditioning done in 9 minutes. They really enjoy that. It’s really a fun practice. We’ve never run a lap. We’ve never run a line. We don’t do that kind of stuff. There is a lot of laughter and a lot of smiling. There is not a lot of yelling and screaming. But they get after it.”

It was a five-and-a-half minute stretch of mayhem caused by Jones against Riverview in the opening round of the district that spearheaded the Bobcats’ rise. North Port trailed by six heading into the final quarter before pulling out a 44-43 victory. Jones grabbed six rebounds in her first two minutes of the fourth quarter, along with forcing a couple of jump balls and turnovers.

“We were out of that game for 31 ½ minutes, and she came in and spurred us,” Tintor said.

That led to a district title and the first two regional victories, including one on Valentine’s Day.

“It’s the one day of the year where you’re supposed to spend a lot of time with the person you love. And that’s where we are,” Tintor said in his pregame speech Tuesday. “They just laughed and got pumped.

“I never had a team like this. There are no cliques. There is no jealousy. There is no animosity.”

In search of the first Final 4 appearance in school history, Tintor received help from the boys side. Varsity assistant Tom McLaughlin made the trip to Orlando to scout University against Orlando Colonial.

“I saw some of his boys reports and they are pretty detailed,” Tintor said. “We should get some pretty good information.”

Do not expect the Bobcats to change their style based on what McLaughlin reports.

“You’re not going to change what you’ve done overnight,” Tintor said. “I’m more concerned what we are doing than what the other team is doing.”

Tintor was minding his own business in 2004, when he walked past the office of then director of athletics Jim Clark, who was telling his secretary the new girls basketball coach he was about to hire decided to decline the offer.

A basketball coach since 1971 on the elementary school, junior high school, summer teams, AAU teams, high school, junior varsity, community college level, Tintor overheard the conversation, stuck his head in Clark’s office and said, “I’ll coach,” despite the fact he never has coached a girls or women’s team in the past.

“And that was that,” Tintor said. “I wasn’t even thinking about coaching.”

Now, he is thinking about the Final 4 and the first team regional title in school history.

“Everything we’ve done since districts is icing on the cake,” Tintor said. “Getting this one would be unreal.”

Last modified: February 19, 2012
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